Finished Plesiosaur + Opal Pineapples

I've finished the Plesiosaur, and worked on incorporating it into the water in the background. Full time-lapse of illustration below:


Light and shadow play a keep part in how believable the Plesiosaurs integration is into the habitat. It took a little bit of experimenting with different brush presets in Procreate to create those thin bands of light. In the end I resorted to the standard airbrush I had been using for everything prior. I think it needs some refining around the neck and those two bright spots on the underside of the belly. The neck needs some softer reflective light, as the contract between the ray highlights and shadow is very stark - (the light doesn't follow the contour lines of the neck). The sharp light under the belly also doesn't make sense, will need to soften, and smudge out the ends of the rays. From here the next things to do are populating the sea floor with rocks, coral, seaweeds, and opal pineapples. (Could also add some smaller fish/sea creatures - will need to look up accurate Cretaceous period representations).


I've started drawing the opal pineapple using some reference material to work out a basic geometric shape and colouring. Compared to regular opals, the colouring on these pineapples are much more diverse.








A time-lapse on the progress so far:


I've kept shapes simple and rough in the sketch, as once the colour is blocked in, the form of the crystals will start to take shape. It's also easier to re-work as the drawing naturally evolves when things are looser, rather than creating a perfect outline to begin with and trying to stick with it. At least in the case of drawing illustrations that you don't have physical references for, a lot of play and experimentation is involved. 
Hours: 7.75


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